


Massassi Dreams

by AnotherRoad



Category: Star Wars Legends: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 22:08:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5472383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnotherRoad/pseuds/AnotherRoad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the events of  "I, Jedi" (11ABY) after Mara's first departure from the Jedi Praxeum on Yavin IV - Mara Jade reflects on her training at the Jedi Academy and overcoming her history as an Agent of the Darkside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Massassi Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beatrice_Otter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Otter/gifts).



Mara Jade sighed, on one hand, she spun her blaster pistol idly on the solid durasteel table and with the other she tapped a few keys on an ancient-looking terminal. The search query would have taken awhile running it from Talon Karrde's central network. The head of the Smuggler's Alliance had most of the best toys, but this pile of dreck was taking forever, especially considering...

  
"What? No one is supposed to be in here!"

  
"Is that right?" Mara continued twirling the pistol on the table. The screen in front of her finally confirmed it had completed loading information onto a datacard. She reached up and ejected the card, sliding it in a pocket in her vest.

  
"What are you doing?! Who are you? Your authorization code, now!"

  
Mara felt the man step into the room before she heard him. She shook her head as she felt him shift. Reaching out with her senses, she applied pressure to the holster housing the blaster pistol at his hip. The man groaned as he strained to free the blaster from its holster.

  
"Now that's just pitiful," Mara spun slowly around in her chair, palming the blaster on the table as she did so. "You know I wouldn't have to be here if you had just given us what I asked for, rather nicely, I might add." It took a few seconds for Mara to recall his name, Ristin Fahl, a security lieutenant for Poj Traval. Poj was a businessman who dealt in rare properties, and it was his pile of dreck terminal in a compound on Nal Hutta that Mara Jade was visiting that day.  
"Poj had made several inquiries about a rare piece that hadn't been picked up yet. We ask for more information, maybe to help move things along, and behold, we find all the transactional data was erased from Karrde's central hub. Now, usually, Karrde would just have his slicers rip your servers to shreds, but I wanted to see for myself who would be this sloppy, and I'd bet my bottom credit that I just found him."

  
The man continued struggling with the blaster.

  
"You seem to be having a bit of trouble there, Ristin. I guess I can't be too surprised. You see, there's only a few reasons that anyone would want to wipe a few weeks' worth of transactional data from the hub, and all of them scream that someone is doing something they're not supposed to be doing, like perhaps selling off some of Poj's new stock and pocketing the profits for themselves?"

  
Ristin's face fell. He looked between Mara and the door and began to back up. Mara shook her head. "Poj knows all about it, and I'm sure he'd like to have a long discussion about how you plan on paying him back. In the meantime, I have places to be." A blue ion bolt pulsed from her side and the man fell. Two security guards came to collect him shortly after, followed by a Duros dressed in fine, silken robes. His voice was deep and rumbling as he greeted her, "I trust you found what you needed?"

Mara nodded and stood up, holstering her blaster, "Yeah Poj. Thanks."

  
"It is the least I could do for your assistance with...this," he gestured towards the man lying stunned on the floor, "You should know there is a comm hail waiting for you from Lando Calrissian. I've put it to your ship"

  
"Of course there is. I'll be you he'll wait too." Mara sighed, bid farewell to the Duros, and headed out of the room, making it a point to stroll as leisurely as possible to the compound's docking bay.

  
Mara settled into the pilot's seat of the Z-95 Headhunter that had brought her to Nal Hutta. She prepped her ignition sequence before even paying any attention to the patiently flashing indicator on here holocom. She waved a hand over the controls and after a few seconds, the small holographic image of Lando Calrissian flourished a bow at her.

  
Mara snapped at him, interrupting what would most assuredly have been the beginning of a terrible pick-up line, "It hasn't even been a week since you dropped me off, Calrissian. What do you want?"

  
Lando straightened himself up. Full of himself as he was, Lando knew when to get to business, and Mara could at least "I was wondering if you'd like to join me on the Errant Venture. One of Booster Terrik's people, I'm told, may have a lead on Jorj Car'das."

  
Talon Karrde had Lando and her seeking out his illusive predecessor for awhile now, and Jade knew how much it meant to him, even if it meant spending much more time with Calrissian than she preferred. She nodded at Lando, "I'll meet you there soon. I have to make a stop by the Jedi Academy first, back on Yavin IV."  
Lando tilted his head, he looked almost jealous. "I thought you said you learned everything you needed from Luke."

  
"This has nothing to do with training, not that it's any business of yours. I have a debt to repay to a friend."

  
Now Lando definitely looked jealous. He bowed again, "Well, I will eagerly awai..."

  
Mara ran a hand over the comm system, cutting him off. She took off from the compound and set her navicomputer to calculate a jump to Yavin IV. While the computer worked, Mara pulled the datacard she had retrieved from Poj's archive data. A debt to a friend - Friend. It was the first time that the word came to Mara casually as it had. Mara Jade didn't have friends. She had partners, comrades, associates, mentors, and masters, but friends?

  
Mara heard her navicomp beep and watched the stars pull into a tunnel. She leaned back and thought about her brief stay at the Jedi Praxeum. Luke's first try at bringing up a new crop of Jedi had certainly gotten off to a rough start. He had lost students, one had even stolen Mara's personal ship, and there was the looming presence of the dark side towering over the fledgling academy. The shadow of Exar Kun, or maybe the Sith Lord himself, was plaguing some of the students. Luke, definitely had his hands full, but he had very much wanted her to work through her past as the Emperor's hand and become a Jedi. Maybe it was a future for her, but not right now. She had the Smuggler's Alliance, and responsibility to Karrde.

  
Priorities aside, Mara did find more than she had expected at the academy. A Rogue Squadron pilot, Corran Horn had come there to learn what he could to track down his missing wife, Mirax. Horn had been former Correlian Security, something of an occupational hazard to a smuggler like herself. When she found herself back-to-back, defending one another from remote bolts with lightsabers, it felt strange, but heartening to have developed trust with someone on such an opposite side of the spectrum as she. They did well, too, for awhile, but training is training for a reason, and they had sometimes found themselves in trobule. During one training session, Corran used a bare hand to catch a remote bolt from striking Mara in the face after she had fallen. When she asked him why he had done it, he told her that's what friends do, but the notion had been so strange for her at the time. Sure, she had come to trust the man as a comrade in arms, but a friend? At first she didn't think so, but here she was with a datacard of Mirax's last transactions before she went missing. It wasn't much of a clue, and yet, it was still something, and she zipped off halfway across the galaxy just to bring it to him.

  
_Heh, maybe he is a friend._

  
Mara stowed the datacard and relaxed, watching the blue tunnel of hyperspace. Darkness crept into the edges of her vision as Mara drifted off to sleep. She found herself on Yavin - not in its airspace, but on the ground in the forests, standing at the foot of a massive temple clustered with carvings of leaves. She recognized the name from Corran's brief research into the area - the Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster. It was strange and beautiful, a relic of Massassi engineering, but there was a coldness about the place. It may have been odd to others, but to Mara, it felt easy, familiar even. 

  
_The Dark Side_

Fear bubbled up somewhere deep in Mara's core. She shunted the feeling away almost immediately, but then came the whispers. They seemed to resonate with the temple itself. Mara found herself drawn closer to the entrance. During her training at the academy, Luke had once told her about a cave he had encountered while training on Dagobah - the cold, and the dark side. Was this like his cave? Some sort of test? Warily, Mara stepped inside the landing and headed further in. 

  
The Temple's interior was just as beautiful as its exterior, with the carvings dancing their way from the floors to the structure's high ceilings, but that wasn't what drew Mara's attention. She could only just make it out from the entrance hall, a shining blue monolith towering from what had to be the temple's central chamber. Determined to get a better look, Mara ascended the stairs from the main landing. The stairs brought her level to it - a massive column of blue stone. 

  
In this room, the whispers seemed to be even louder, and Mara knew they had to be coming from the monolith. As Mara stepped forward, she began to pick out the voices echoing through the chamber. People she knew, both past and present. She found Luke, Karrde, Corran, even Lando, but also, Grand Moff Tarkin, Darth Vader, and another that stopped her in her tracks, just a few feet away from the base of the monolith. 

  
_Not you. Not here._

  
Shreev Palpatine was staring back at her from the blue monolith. He looked younger, closer to how he had been when Mara had first encountered him as a child. From behind the stone, his hand was outstretched. All notion of squelching her fear was forgotten. Mara found herself trembling. She stepped forward and reached out her hand, touching it to the stone.

  
Palpatine's voice echoed in her ears, "You want to leave here, don't you?" The image in the stone swirled, showing her childhood home. Mara recognized her parents seated in their living quarters, and she was there as well - a young, red-gold haired girl, standing next to the Emperor. Her parents had been reluctant to let her leave with him, but something about the man had made her determined to go with him. Mara tried to remember. It wasn't the promise of a life on Coruscant, which is what she had told her family, but the power. He was simply unquestionably powerful, and he told her she was needed. That was all it took. 

  
Mara looked up from the stone see Palpatine standing on the stairs, hand still outstretched. She didn't notice her own hand still clinging to the monolith. 

  
"Well Mara," he said, his voice almost kindly, "shall we go?"

  
Mara shook her head, "What was it you said, that first night on Coruscant? You left me alone in the undercity to find my own way back," behind her, the image behind the stone faded, showing the same girl fixing a discarded blaster pistol and using it to ward off thugs and predators, "Oh yes, 'You're far too trusting.' "

  
The image of Palpatine faded and Mara turned back in time to see her younger self shoot two Gran who had cornered her in an alleyway. She shook her head. The image faded and she once again saw herself, but older this time. She was surrounded by a circle of hooded figures. Palpatine's voice echoed in her mind again.

  
"You have been trained to hunt, to infiltrate, and to kill, Mara Jade. You are my Hand. You will carry my justice and my wrath. Your only ally is my only ally, the Dark Side. One of these men have betrayed me. Kill him, immediately." 

  
Mara rememebered this final test. During her training, Mara had exercised restraint in taking life. She had spared those who she had bested in her training. Most people were more useful alive, but she knew Palpatine would not have it here. She watched the woman cut down each of the men without hesitation. She recognized some, but not all. It didn't matter, today they were only here to satisfy the Emperor's demand. Mara looked away from the stone. She had tried to forget that day, but she never would. Going forward, she still resolved to exercise discretion, even mercy where she could. She didn't recognize it now, but that day had given birth to a spark of defiance in her. That spark had made her allies, sometimes even out of enemies. It saved Skywalker from the Emperor's final command, and it had saved Mara too. The image faded from the stone and Mara looked up. She was surrounded again by cloaked figures, but she knew all of them - Luke, Corran, Lando, Karrde - her new allies since being free from the Emperor. Palpatine's voice echoed from the stone behind her.

  
"Kill them. Take your place back as my hand," he demanded.

  
Mara didn't remember bringing her weapons into the temple, but a lightsaber nonetheless hung at her hip. She recognized it as the saber Luke had given her. The one that had belonged to Darth Vader before he had fallen to the dark side. Mara knew Luke had redeemed Vader, and in a way, she knew Luke had helped to redeem her, but her fight had always been a solitary one. Maybe, it didn't have to be. She took the lightsaber and ignited it, but instead of stepping into the circle, she stabbed through the stone behind her. As it popped and burned, the image of the temple around here faded. 

  
Mara Jade awoke to see the Yavin IV filling her view ports. She could feel the tension in the Force coming from the planet, even from all the way up here. She prepped her shuttle to enter the atmosphere. As soon as she did, she could feel the battle taking place - the Dark side against the Light. Corran had gone after Exar Kun, he was alone, and he was in trouble.

  
Instead of heading to the Jedi Praxeum, she followed her senses until she came upon a familiar temple with carved leaves around its edges. She recognized her own Headhunter that had been stolen on her last visit, probably used by Corran to fly out here. She landed closeby and headed toward the temple. As she stepped into the entrance, Mara Jade drew upon the Force. It filled her with calm and an almost unfamiliar resolve. She moved past the landing and ascended the temple, headed towards the the grand audience chamber, where she sensed Corran and a dark presence. She saw Horn on his knees, nearly shredded, and a dark shadow towering over him. Beyond the shadow, she saw the pillar of massive blue stone. She stalled a moment, expecting to see more flashes of her past, but it was empty save for a few glowing beams of light shining in through cracks in the temple's ancient walls.  
The only darkness in the room was the shadow of the Dark Lord Exar Kun and the visions he was stabbing into Corran's mind - his father, his missing wife, failing his family and his legacy, but Mara Jade knew the whispers, the pain, and fear of the dark side. Corran had gone on this journey alone, but Mara knew he didn't have to be.

  
_After all, what are friends for?_

  
A calm radiated from Mara as she sauntered into the room. Her steely tone stabbed through the temple as she called a challenge to the Dark Lord, and Mara Jade smiled, knowing it would etch itself right into his ego.

  
"Is that the best you've got?"


End file.
